This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation tip sheet provides guidance on how healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs can request participation in the Strengthening the Implementation of Marriage and Relationship Programs (SIMR) project. The SIMR project will work with select HMRE programs to strengthen their recruitment, retention, and client engagement activities. The tip sheet illustrates the benefits for HMRE programs to participate in SIMR, the timeline for site selections among HMRE programs, and how HMRE programs may become involved. The deadline for programs to contact SIMR is October 23, 2020.

This process study report from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation features the University of Florida’s ELEVATE program, which is delivered by the University’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences county-based Cooperative Extension Service. ELEVATE aims to teach couples practical approaches to support healthy relationships and to develop mindfulness practices that address the physiological response to conflict and stress. The study covers the context for implementing ELEVATE, procedures for greater implementation of ELEVATE through the Extension statewide, and approaches for recruitment and enrollment of couples and for encouraging program participation and engagement. The study is part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services evaluation of five Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education grantees.

This research-to-practice brief presents findings from an initial study of custodial and non-custodial parents enrolled in the Fathers Advancing Community Together (FACT) program, which is offered by Rubicon Programs in Contra Costa County, California. FACT addresses responsible parenting and healthy relationships and delivers economic stability services. The brief notes that FACT parents believe they already possess the necessary skills to be successful parents and acknowledge the importance of personal financial management for long-term economic stability. The survey of FACT parents also identified the challenges they encountered accessing childcare and balancing job seeking while participating in FACT, which led to a restructuring of the program to better serve parents.

This report is part of the Responding to Intimate Violence in Relationship Programs (RIViR) study to evaluate approaches for assessing teen dating violence. The report covers how to accurately identify youth in Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs who are experiencing teen dating violence (TDV) so they can be referred for additional services. The report also examines how youth and TDV program staff perceive tools to assess TDV and strategies to implement these tools. The report compared two HMRE programs—More Than Conquerors, Inc. of Conyers, Georgia and Youth and Family Services of Rapid City, South Dakota.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief is part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation which assessed HMRE programs in five sites. The brief illustrates five steps for increasing recruitment capacity in these programs. Lessons learned from the brief could be adopted for HMRE programs serving adults to build and implement recruitment approaches. Additional STREAMS reports will identify how these recruitment approaches were implemented to better deliver HMRE programs.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report covers the 2015 cohort of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) grantees, which were awarded five-year grants in September 2015. The report examines grantees’ operations from July 2016 to March 2019, including how these programs recruited and served participants and how the grantees staffed their respective programs. The report also reviews HMRF program participants’ characteristics and identifies changes in their characteristics during this review period.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report reviews data collection and performance measurement improvements that will be used to evaluate the next cohort of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) grantees in late 2020. The review examines three key areas: what changes to the HMRF performance measures would improve the usefulness, quality, and clarity of data collected; what enhancements to Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management (nFORM) (the data collection system through which grantees submit data) would increase data quality and improve user experience and data access; and what training and technical assistance activities would help grantees when using nFORM. The review is drawn from lessons learned from the 2015 cohort of HMRF grantees.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report presents findings of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, which is a random assignment impact analysis and process assessment of five Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) grantees. The process study report identifies findings on The Parenting Center’s experiences in the design and implementation of Empowering Families, which was designed to offer integrated HMRE and economic stability services to couples raising children together. The STREAMS impact evaluation reviewed the effectiveness of the integrated HMRE Empowering Families program and whether intensive economic stability services effect participants’ employment and earnings and relationship quality and co-parenting.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation research-to-practice brief covers background information on the consequences of domestic violence on families and children and illustrates how prevention and intervention efforts on domestic violence are framed within fatherhood programs. The brief also identifies various promising practices in these programs to support both the prevention of domestic violence and interventions when incidences have already been perpetrated. The brief was developed through the Preventing and Addressing Intimate Violence when Engaging Dads (PAIVED) study.